Historic Headlines

On April 30, 1975, Communist North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces captured the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, forcing South Vietnam to surrender and bringing about an end to the Vietnam War.

An Associated Press article in the May 1 New York Times reported: “Scores of North Vietnamese tanks, armored vehicles and camouflaged Chinese built
trucks rolled to the presidential palace. The president of the former non-Communist Government of South Vietnam, Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had gone on radio and television to announce his administration’s
surrender, was taken to a microphone later by North Vietnamese soldiers for another announcement. He appealed to all Saigon troops to lay down their arms and was taken by the North Vietnamese soldiers to an undisclosed
destination.”

The fall of Saigon came just over two years after the United States, ally of South Vietnam, pulled out of the Vietnam War with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.
The agreement created a cease-fire between North and South Vietnam, but it did not end the conflict. Fighting resumed by the end of 1973 as the Viet Cong, which still had an estimated 150,000 men positioned in South
Vietnam, renewed offensives.

Without the support of United States troops and with limited American aid, the South Vietnamese struggled to stop the advance of North Vietnamese forces. In the spring of 1975, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam
desperately asked President Gerald R. Ford for support, but Mr. Ford could not provide it. Mr. Thieu resigned on April 21 and fled the country.

In the weeks leading up to the fall of Saigon, the United States organized the evacuation of Americans and South Vietnamese orphans and refugees from the city. On April 29 and 30, the United States frantically rescued
all remaining Americans and some Vietnamese via helicopter. In the American news media, photographs of the airlifts from the roof of the United States Embassy and other buildings become emblematic of the fall of
Saigon. However, thousands of South Vietnamese desperate to escape were left stranded outside the embassy.

North and South Vietnam were reunited under the control of the Communist North Vietnamese government. The North immediately renamed Saigon “Ho Chi Minh City,” after its former president. It rounded up
South Vietnamese soldiers and government officials, placed them in camps and encouraged the people of Saigon to leave the city and take up farming in the countryside. The Communist government implemented collectivization
plans to transform Vietnam into a socialist country. Its policies had disastrous effects on the economy, however, and in the 1980s the government decided to move to a more market-based, capitalist economy.

Connect to Today:

In December 2011, as United States troops were pulling out of Iraq after nearly nine years of military occupation, Kirk W. Johnson, a former reconstruction coordinator in Iraq, wrote a Times Op-Ed about the danger Iraqis who had supported the United States during the war might face once the troops withdrew. He criticized the Obama administration for admitting “only a tiny fraction of our own loyalists”
into the country to ensure heir safety, just as the Ford administration stranded many of its Vietnamese allies during the chaos of the fall of Saigon. He concluded, “Moral timidity and a hapless bureaucracy
have wedged our doors tightly shut and the Iraqis who remained loyal to us are weeks away from learning how little America’s word means.”

In your opinion, does the Unites States have a responsibility to protect those who support its cause in foreign wars? Why or why not? What are some of the pros and cons of allowing a large number of Iraqi refugees into
the United States? How, if at all, do you think the administration’s policies might affect future military interventions and occupations?

It’s a sad day because the US abandon our ally, even though it’s obvious that the VC deliberately broke the Paris Treaty and continued to attack the South. Yes, the Communist rounded up the soldiers
and officials of the old regime and put them in forced labor concentration camp for many years and tried to re-educate (brain wash) them for many years. Many prisoners died in the camps due to torture, mistreat
and diseases. The VC continue to violate many human rights of the VN people The present Vietnamese economy now can be called Red Capitalism, only the Communist Politburo has became super rich while the common
citizens are still hungry.

I think it does stink that were turning our back on them but sometimes there is complications. Also people are still uneasy after 911 and if a large number of Iraqi refugees come to America there would be lots of
discrimination. The government would also probably be ridiculed for this. However it would be the right thing to do to rescue these refugees.

This picture does not show the actual kaos of its true story. There were a lot more pictures which could show how terrify & sadly it was for the poeple involved in that evacuation. The Vietnam communist was
and still is more brutalize than the Iraqis for one thing. History did show that for more than 10 years after the war this communist goverment had killed, immediately & slowly, many of the men & women
whose related to the South VN regime through what it called re-educate camp but it was actually comparable to the Jewish concentration camp in WW II. Iraqis in someway are not comparable to the Vietnamese
because they have a different culture which may effect the US security because among them there are some people whose belief is what we may call as “fanatic”.

The problem is the root, which is the war itself which was a terrible mistake. It was an American invasion built on false premises, even falsified premises, and it is a shame on the soul of the United States and
Americans, in whose name it was carried out, and I am one. When something starts out on such terribly wrong bases and footings as the US Invasion of Iraq and the US War in Vietnam, there can be no good end
stories, no good results, no good paths for the nationals who helped the US army. It is wrong from beginning to end.

I thik that the people from saigon really stuggled in lifetime they work real hard to get to the united state to get away from all this dangorus comotion.Now people are still stuggling out here i diffret cuntries
tryingto do the same.

I am married to one of the little girls that was on this helicopter. She is a U.S. citizen, who had her immigration paperwork destroyed by an ex-husband. She cannot prove her citizenship because of it, and therefore
cannot get a driver’s license, open a bank account, or sit for a licensing exam. The Obama administration has charged $400 for a copy of the document and have taken more than 6 months without sending
the copy to her. They are now processing requests from last June. Yet, if we had committed fraud and claimed she was not a U.S. citizen, we could have already had her paperwork processed. This is a story that
someone in the press should follow up on. Why are immigrants being given special priority over U.S. citizens.